People are talking about FTL and about how very unlikely everything is but in 'reality', we don't know crap about a ship going FTL. We can make theories, but that is all they are.
Why not a ship that travels through space and time to get to its destination. It would be something like Teleporting. I think Lensemen had something like that. (I never read THOSE books but I read a book by the same author where you just thought of where you wanted to go)
Who knows, maybe all the advanced alien cultures are mentalists and they move their ships from point A to point B in a kind of DUNE fashion.
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semi-recent warp drive article
And completely lacking of any real details. It even acknowledges that they have no idea even how to fuel the thing.
I really, honestly hope we can figure out a way around FTL. But this all seems to be wishful thinking more than actual science.
Greg
The first step is to be at your destination before you realise you want to go there. Once you set out, the time taken for your trip will be negative. Taking distance into account, you have thus traveled faster than light.
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Another thought on the galactic community & the Drake equation: do we need to add a term for what percentage of intelligent industrialized civilizations develop virtual reality and then completely withdraw into virtual worlds never bothering to spend any more time on what's "out there"?
Greg
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I second Fizzygoo on his diatribe about certain physics being "wrong" or not; it also bothers me a lot when people say something "breaks the laws of physics" when, at worst, it only means there are "laws" that we dont know YET.
"Laws" is also a bit of a misnomer, since we are so used to seeing law (of people) broken. The same problem shows up when you try to do any kind of simile/metaphor using a commonplace thing to explain something, and people extrapolate using the commonplace thing, even if it only has a tangential relationship to the thing trying to be explained.
@Gregh
As for the drake equation, it's a nearly-tautological. It's basically like saying " well, to now the odds of rolling 1 on a d6, I have one face divided by 6 possible faces". It's a list of different elements that are needed to calculate the odds of meeting other intelligent life (and as you indicate Gregh, it does not take into account the possibility of self-destruction). A good share of those elements will be impossible to evalute until we have a larger sample size.
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*dusts off Miskatonic University physics degree*
I hope everyone recognizes the reference. If not, just know it's just a bit of self-mockery in play. After all, I'm about to explain a physics idea to people who actually know physics; I don't think I could get any more conceited in action without wearing a neon sign proclaiming I am a god.
Sadly, the neon sign is currently on backorder.
The idea is that a set of physics is a set of observable energy-matter-time interactions that can be applied to a specific set of theoretical constructs with a specific theoretical basis at their core. The idea is to get it as broad as possible so one can get the best explanation possible. General relativity and quantum mechanics are both sets of physics under that.
The thing is, it would definitely not be physics on a local scale; that would make FTL even more impossible to achieve, due to the fact the speed of light in a vaccuum would be a variable and, with it, the amount of energy per increment of speed would also be variable. The galaxy could not exist under such a scenario.
The idea is that the differing sets of physics exist everywhere, but we just haven't discovered any beyond the known two yet. Considering how recently empirical evidence was obtained for those two, I do not think this would be much of a surprise. Even more so that we don't actually have the equipment to fully test either, but are slowly obtaining it over time through a combination of technological advancement and refined knowledge of what to look for. Adding the recent discovery of the Higgs-Boson, I am confident that we will get even more answers on those two... and, if there is a possibility of uniting them or the universe is just a jumble of different sets of physics, likely the Higgs-Boson will eventually tell us. Assuming we don't accidentally break the universe or something (statistical probably of that happening: slightly less than the sun suddenly turning pink and causing flowers to rain on Earth).
Now, why wouldn't these physics be quickly noticed by us? We exist in three or four dimensions. The universe, the last time I checked string theory, is quite a few more. So we might not notice them yet because they simply are currently beyond our technological capacity to notice.
But if they do exist, they are probably our best chance at FTL travel.
Oh, and I wouldn't be surprised if the percentage of alien races who retreated into virtual reality was extremely high. After all, the galaxy is a big, empty place, so virtual reality may allow them to skip around the loneliness of how empty it probably is.
Sorry about the derail, Hama.
I really could use an embarrassed smiley on here >.>
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(and as you indicate Gregh, it does not take into account the possibility of self-destruction). A good share of those elements will be impossible to evalute until we have a larger sample size.
Actually, it sort of does; the rightmost term is usually a lifetime of sorts - the length of time the civilization will emit signals. If civilizations swiftly destroy themselves with nuclear war, environmental disaster, or swiftly retreat into virtual worlds, then L would be short.